Visual information plays a key role in mobile robot operation. Even with the use of sophisticated inertial navigation systems, the accumulation of position error necessitates the need for periodic corrections. In the autonomous mobile robot application scenario, a significant amount of positional error is accumulated in the land navigation system after traversing long distances. Landmark recognition may be used to update the land navigation system through the recognition of observed objects in a scene and associating them with specific landmarks in the geographic map knowledge base, thus guiding the robot or vehicle having the navigation system, to stay on course. Landmarks of interest include mostly man-made objects such as telephone poles, storage tanks, buildings, houses, gates, bridges, roads, and the like.